


with the night falling down

by tropes



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Coda, F/M, Friendship, M/M, Unrequited Love, or so they think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 05:53:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4865498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tropes/pseuds/tropes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lardo left without grabbing her coat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with the night falling down

**Author's Note:**

> This is a coda to [Sophomore Year #11 - Junior Show](http://omgcheckplease.tumblr.com/post/129092955177).
> 
> My undying gratitude goes out to notmissmarple and alexscat for their quick and accurate beta work. You guys make my work shine!
> 
>  
> 
> Title from Neko Case's "In California."

_X_

Lardo left without grabbing her coat.

Bitty gently grips Jack’s wrist and ducks his head underneath Shitty’s arm to catch his eye. Jack looks confused for a split second, then turns and sees. He nods. Bitty then carefully extricates himself from the celebratory huddle. He dodges students and professors and looky-loos, for once thankful for his size, and jogs outside.

He doesn’t see her.

The Koetter Center is at the edge of campus proper, in South Quad, near the Pond; there’s a trendy section of town just adjacent. Bitty looks left, looks right. He has no idea which direction Lardo would have chosen. Surely she wouldn’t go back to the Haus—

Behind him, from an alley between the fancy coffee shop he can’t afford and a little boutique that sells clothes that cost more than half of his monthly rent, Bitty hears a sniffle.

He picks his way around a couple of snowbanks that are almost taller than he is, and stops dead.

Crouching in the alley, curled up tight and shivering in her pretty sleeveless dress, is Larissa Duan. She’s got her face in her hands. Bitty automatically steps forward, slipping off his jacket. 

“Lardo.”

With another violent sniffle, Lardo looks up. Oh _gosh_ , her makeup’s a _mess_.

“Hey,” she says, and the closer he walks, the more Bitty can see that she’s absolutely quivering with cold.

“Hey,” he replies, and quickly drapes his sport coat over her shoulders, tucking it around her. He crouches down next to her. “It’s really, really cold out here.”

Lardo heaves a long sigh in and out, and nods. “Yup.”

Bitty’s hands twist together, and then he reaches out tentatively to brush a couple tears off Lardo’s cheek. “You want me to go back inside and get your stuff?”

Mouth twisting and trembling, Lardo shakes her head. “I just need a minute.”

Bitty nods, and unsuccessfully tries to suppress a shiver of his own. _Fuck_ , Massachusetts is so fucking _cold_ in February. 

“You take all the time you need,” he replies, and hugs his knees.

She sits there for a couple minutes, then rests her head on her own knees, looking off to the side where the frozen Pond sits covered in drifts. One slender hand comes up to wipe under her eyes, and it’s always amazing to Bitty how some girls just know how to clean up, how they’re so practiced at hiding the evidence of their own breakdowns that they can simply wipe carefully under their eyes, and it’s almost like they were never crying at all.

How awful that Lardo has that muscle memory down pat.

“Well,” Lardo says, her voice thick and choked. “This is dumb.”

Bitty shakes his head. “It’s not dumb.”

“It is, it is,” she whispers, her breath clouding the air between them. “I should be happy. He’s not going to Stanford or Northwestern. He’s staying in Massachusetts. I should be ecstatic.”

Bitty feels his mouth twist, and an increasingly familiar bitter feeling wells up inside him. “Well. You’re not wrong, logically. But feelings aren’t logical.”

“No,” Lardo says, and lifts her head to look at him, her eyes knowing and honest. “I’m glad you and I have each other, but I’m not glad we have something like this in common.”

Bitty blinks and swallows, tries to hide the zing of adrenaline zipping through him. 

“Oh, are we not talking in code anymore? I thought I was starting to get good at it, what a waste.” He shivers convulsively, arms tightening around his middle to try and conserve heat. It doesn’t work.

Lardo lets out a surprised bark of a laugh and gets to her feet, giving Bitty a hand up. 

“Come on. If you freeze out here, Jack’ll give me murder eyes.” Bitty sputters out some kind of inadequate response about Jack being worried about playoffs, because _what_? 

Lardo rolls her eyes. “Ugh, come on, Mildly Oblivious. Let’s get you back to Captain Obvious.” Bitty’s face is literally about to go up in flames, but he decides to just let it go. Tonight isn’t about his hopeless one-sided love affair with Jack Zimmermann.

She goes to pull her hand away, but Bitty squeezes it tight for a moment.

“I am incredibly lucky to have you in my life, Larissa Duan.” He steps closer and puts his arm around her shoulders, surprised that she lets him. “Tell you what.”

Lardo pulls a compact out of her pocket and quick as lightening fixes her makeup considerably. _Geez_ , he really doesn’t know how some girls manage it, but Lardo is a _pro_.

She puts the compact away and slips her own arm around his waist. “What?”

Bitty steers them back towards Koetter, walking slow. “I wanna make a pact.”

“Okay…”

“You and I are in a pretty bad spot, romantically, wouldn’t you say?” He squeezes her shoulders for emphasis.

Lardo peers over at him suspiciously. “Bits, if this is you trying to say that we should date each other since we can’t find anyone else, I feel compelled to remind you that I don’t have the necessary parts.”

“Oh my god, Larissa, _no_ ,” Bitty says, rolling his eyes. 

Lardo shrugs his arm off and turns to face him. “Then what?”

Bitty opens his mouth, and closes it, then opens it again. 

“I will if you will,” he blurts.

Lardo blinks. “Huh?”

The wind picks up and Bitty shivers again, harder. 

“ _Fuck_. Look. Graduation is coming. They’re both _leaving_ ,” and fuck if Bitty’s voice doesn’t crack. “You and I, we will have nothing to lose and everything to gain. By the end of May, swear to me. You’ll tell Shitty how you feel.” 

He lets out a long breath. 

“And I’ll tell Jack.” Lardo nods, and Bitty swallows, his throat dry. “How I feel.” Lardo lifts her eyebrows. “Which is um.” Lardo starts to smile, like she can’t help it. “A lot?”

“You feel a lot?” Lardo says, fluttering her eyelashes exaggeratedly.

Oh god. He’s never said that aloud to another person. Oh god. 

Bitty is not going to freak out. He is going to man the fuck up, because Lardo needs him, dammit!

He grabs Lardo’s hand and turns them both back towards the center, walking quickly. She bursts into laughter and hurries along after him. “Yes, I feel a lot. So do you. And we’re going to do something about it.” They’ve reached the door now, and Bitty turns, holding up his fist, little finger extended. “Pinky swear?”

Lardo’s grinning, pink-cheeked and bright-eyed in the frigid air. Bitty’s pretty sure that most people wouldn’t notice she’d ever been crying. 

Mission accomplished.

She catches his pinky with her own and shakes their joined hands back and forth. “Pinky swear.”

The doors burst open.

“HEEEEEYYYYYYY!” Ransom and Holster bellow, spilling out of the gallery doors. They smell like a brewery tour gone horribly, horribly wrong. “Sooooo, we got kicked out,” Ransom says.

The rest of the team follows them, their faces a mixture of shame and triumph, Jack bringing up the rear and laughing quietly. 

Bitty is _mortified_. “You guys, can we manage one outing without ending up in the paper, please?” he asks. 

The boys just part like water and flow past Bitty and Lardo in a boozy rush, walking halfway down the block in no time.

Lardo’s pinky pulls away from his. He turns to look and smiles. 

Shitty’s got her coat and bag, and is forcibly bundling her up. 

“Bro!” Shitty says, shaking his head. “It’s way too fucking cold for you two to wander off into the frozen tundra of Central Mass.” For god’s sake, he’s _zipping up her coat for her_. Bitty wants to hide his face in his hands and laugh as Shitty basically herds her up the street towards the Haus, chattering the whole time.

Lardo’s got nothing to worry about.

A hand taps Bitty’s shoulder, and he turns.

Jack.

“Hey,” Bitty says, a little breathless at the sight of him so soon after admitting so much out loud.

“Hey,” Jack says, and holds up Bitty’s winter coat. “I guess you lost your jacket?”

The wind swirls around them, shaking him, and Bitty grabs the coat and puts it on quickly. It’s still warm from being inside. 

“Oh my _god_ , _thank you_ ,” he says, and jumps about a mile when Jack steps close and rubs his hands up and down his arms briskly once, twice, before stepping away again and ducking his head.

“It’s kind of chilly out I guess,”Jack says.

“Jack,” Bitty says, “it’s fucking twenty degrees outside before wind chill, and it’s supposed to snow buckets tomorrow.”

Jack looks at him and grins. “I know, it’s great.”

“Ugh!” Bitty stomps his foot in mock irritation. “I don’t know how you stand it.”

Jack shrugs. “I guess you had to grow up that way.” He stands next to Bitty while Bitty gets out his woolen hat and gloves and wraps his scarf _just so_. 

“So, um. Is Lardo okay?”

Bitty freezes for a second, then continues bundling up. “Yeah. I think she will be.”

Jack’s quiet for a minute. Then, “I wish I could help. There’s nothing I can really do to make her understand that she’s got nothing to worry about.”

Bitty really does stop what he’s doing, then. “Yeah?” he asks, cautious.

Jack shrugs. “Of course. Shitty’s crazy about her.”

Longing wells up in Bitty’s throat. “Why hasn’t he said anything?”

“Why hasn’t she?” Jack replies, almost challenging.

Bitty lifts one shoulder half-heartedly. “Scared. Nervous. Change is terrifying. They’re best friends. What if it doesn’t work out?” He’s not talking about Shitty and Lardo anymore.

Jack steps closer and Bitty’s breath hitches. “What if it does?”

Adrenaline surges through Bitty for the second time that night. He feels brave. “Well. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. I’m sure that when the right time comes, everything will work out the way it’s supposed to.” He breaks their gaze and bumps his shoulder into Jack’s upper arm. “Let’s go home before I turn into a popsicle.”

He hears Jack let out a quick, sharp breath, and then he falls in step with him. “Speaking of popsicles…”

Bitty rolls his eyes. “Jack, _no_. It’s freezing out.”

“But those butterscotch ones you made were really good,” Jack says, near-wheedling, and if somebody had told Bitty a year ago that Jack Zimmermann would be begging him for sweets, would be walking home with him from an art show after dark, would be standing there steadfast when he turns, holding his coat for him like he— like he—

Bitty ducks his head into his coat and grins, giddy.

“I’ll make some,” he says.

Jack turns his head to look at the Pond, but not before Bitty sees him grin. A block ahead of them, he can see Shitty and Lardo roughhousing—Shitty gets Lardo in a fireman’s carry and starts running, Lardo hanging over his shoulder and slapping his ass with every bounce.

“I’ll make a batch,” Bitty says, brimming with tentative joy, “just for you.” 

“Really?” asks Jack, shuffling his feet and fiddling with his knitted hat—Bitty had once heard Jack call it a took or something and Shitty had made fun of him until Ransom cuffed him on the back of the head “for all of Canada.” Before he can second-guess himself, Bitty steps forward and takes the hat from Jack’s hands, then goes on tiptoe to put it on for him.

“Only if you don’t catch a chill on the way back to the Haus,” he says, adjusting edge of the hat over the tips of Jack’s ears, letting himself linger for a moment. He risks a glance in Jack’s eyes and slowly drops his arms to his sides, just looking.

Jack breaks their gaze and shakes his head, his smile so fond that Bitty can hardly believe this is the same surly, serious captain as just one year ago. 

“We’d better go.” He turns and starts to walk away, then turns back. “You coming with me?”

Bitty looks at Jack. Smiles. Observes the bend in Jack’s elbow as he puts his gloved hands in his jacket pockets. Considers how easy it would be to place his hand in that crook, to slide his hand into Jack’s pocket to link their fingers together.

Thinks, for the first time, that maybe he could do that someday soon.

This pact of his and Lardo’s might not be so hard to fulfil. 

“Yeah,” Bitty steps forward to meet Jack, already thinking of some way to make those popsicles with maple sugar. “I’m coming with you.”

_X_

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly just reblog crap and post instagram selfies and pictures of my dogs, but if that is your jam you can [tumbl](http://adisusedshed.tumblr.com/) me if you wanna.


End file.
